Increasing Fish Production

Revolving around facilitating tillers of land to take to fisheries by making available fish seeds and technical support to them, the strategy aims at giving agriculture a diversified push, and providing farmers with another basket to earn from.

Haryana agriculture minister, Paramvir Singh told The Financial Express, that the fisheries department has set a target of bringing 20,000 hectares of water area under fish farming by the end of the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-12) by stocking 4,000 lakh fish seeds. At present around 16,275 hectares of water area is under fish cultivation in the state.

“Our aim is to produce 88,125 tonnes of fish in 2009-10 which would be increased to 1, 00,000 tonnes by the end of the 11th Five-Year Plan,” Mr Singh said.

On productivity, the target had been pegged at 5,300 kg/hectare/year in 2009-10 from 5,200 kg/hectare/year in 2008-09. Mr Singh said the work on the strategy had begun to show results.

The fisheries department had managed to earn a revenue of Rs 50.08 lakh up to November, 2009 in this financial year as against Rs 49.36 lakh during 2008-09, despite drought-like conditions in the state.

The state government has set up 18 fish farmers development agencies to extend technical and financial assistance to such farmers who have either taken village ponds on long lease, or had excavated ponds on own land. Panchayats were earning more than Rs 20 crore/annum from the lease money.

Mr Singh said the fisheries department has set up fish health care centres at the district level. Similarly, aquatic labs had been set up at all government fish seed farms to enhance per unit fish seed productivity by reducing the mortality rate in young fishes. In all, 114 field offices were working to extend technical and financial help to fish farmers, Mr Singh said.

There were 15 fish seed farms in government sector and 16 in the private sector to meet the demand for fish seed.

The agriculture minister said that Haryana had good resources in the form of rivers, drains, canals, lakes, small reservoirs, water harvesting dams, community and own land ponds for development of fisheries.

With a view to conserve endangered fish species, particularly Mahseer fish, the state government had banned commercial fishing in a stretch from Tajewala to Kalesar and from Dadupur Headworks to revenue boundary of Amadalpur village.

The fisheries department has set up fish markets at Faridabad , Panipat and Yamuna Nagar and two new fish markets were being set up at Bahadurgarh and Gurgaon with 100 per cent financial assistance from the Central government to cater the demand of local consumers.

He said besides that, the state level Aquaculture Research and Training Institute, Hisar arranges training programmes for fish farmers, fishermen and para staff to upgrade their technical skills.